O2 UK customers to lose free BT WiFi hotspot access from July 1

O2 UK's four-year long partnership to allow their customers free BT WiFi hotspot access is to come to an end on July 1. A message on O2's official website says that following this date the carrier will be transitioning across to their own nationwide WiFi offering.

O2 states they have 8,000 hotspots spread across the UK, though this is far from the reach that BT offers through their Openzone hotspot offering. After July 1 O2 customers will be required to pay in order to use BT WiFi hotspots, though customers on rival network EE will still be able to connect for free. Alternatively, if you're a BT Broadband customer, you'll be able to take advantage by using those account credentials instead.

Since O2 was the original launch partner in the UK for the iPhone, there's likely a sizeable number of customers who will be affected by this change. How do you feel about it? Is the BT WiFi something you've been using a lot of over the years?

Reader comments

O2 UK customers to lose free BT WiFi hotspot access from July 1

To be honest I always found BT Openzone to be patchy at best, so I won't miss it all, let alone pay for it. The Cloud wifi spots, whilst not as numerous as BT ones, work much better. The carriers constantly look at new offers to entice new subscribers and the people will vote with their wallets to look for the best deal that suits them.

I'm with Vodafone, so I never got BT WiFi as fringe benefit of my mobile contract, but I have BT Broadband so I get it as part of that (and on London Underground, but that's a tie up between Virgin Media and mobile carriers, not BT).